Barcelona Venue Offering Luxury Hospitality

Written by: Staff on 26th April 2013

Barcelona Venue Offering Luxury Hospitality |

Spain is still in a deep recession, but the Village at the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona, which annually hosts this week’s Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, still serves a high-end clientele

The Village is an exclusive, invitation-only area for business people, athletes, politicians and VIPs to meet in a prestigious environment during the tournament. It is also the location for sponsors to promote their brands.

It features a restaurant, VIP lounge and 26 tents. In 2012, some 20,000 visitors spent time there.

IMG manages the tournament and has done a good job of attracting corporate clients. IMG’s head of Global Tennis , Fernando Soler, lives in home in Barcelona.

While many attendees spend hours watching balls being hit across the net, others like to break up their days.

“The club could not host the tournament by itself,” Albert Agusti, the club’s president told Mundo Deportivo. “The income from ticket sales, TV rights and advertising was not enough,” he adds. “IMG generates resources, charges for it, sells and manages and supervises the assembly of everything. IMG offers other types of activities which are all tailored to the needs of each customer: getting tickets , other box seats, brand presence … Each one is different and the tournament cannot succeed without hospitality like this.”

Even though number of unemployed in Spain broke the 6 million barrier during the first quarter, (a new record for the country ) and the unemployment rate rose to 27.2%, the tournament is still growing. That is somewhat remarkable considering that nation’s economy just posted a 0.5-percent contraction in the same quarter. The nation’s central bank just announced that the Spanish economy is expected to decline by 1 to 1.5 percent throughout this year, after contracting by 1.37 percent in 2012.

But at the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, Emirates (which is not a Spanish company) came in as a new sponsor in 2013, and Samsung and other major sponsors signed up again. However, Agusti did says that smaller companies have backed off a bit.

But people keep coming through the doors.

“It’s the big week in the city,” he said. “There is no other event of its kind outside Barça [soccer] matches, the F-1 or motorcycling. It’s the social event of Barcelona.”

©Daily Tennis News Wire

Topics: Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, Mundo Deportivo, noticias sobre el tenis español, Real Club de Tenis, Spanish tennis news, Sports, tenis en barcelona